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Tag: backgroundchecking
Cyber-vetting may sound like solely a way to dig up dirt about someone. But it can be used to not only avoid a bad hire, but also help perform a good hire and increase the chance of a good fit.
About 80% of employers search and track the online activities of candidates in a practice often referred to as cyber-vetting. How and why is this done? How should you do it? Where is it going?
Here are a couple of ways employers are using cyber-vetting to assess candidates: keep reading…
Ever since Facebook started rolling out its facial recognition service — officially “Tag Suggestions” — a few months ago, pictures have been getting tagged with the names of the people who are in them, without their permission and even without their knowledge.
As you might imagine, this is causing an outcry about the privacy implications. Last week, just days after Facebook extended its facial recognition to Europe and other countries, a group of privacy organizations filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. One of the issues is that Facebook requires users to opt-out rather than opt-in to the service. The bigger part, however, is over what data Facebook is collecting and how it will be used.
European Union regulators raised the alarm last week, and now some in Congress are complaining about Facebook’s implementation.
Facebook’s response? “We should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them.” To be fair to Facebook, the service has been around for months in the U.S. without much complaint. But a Sophos blog post complained that it was turned on for users elsewhere without any notification, and that the default is on. keep reading…
Even as states and the U.S. EEOC are getting tougher — and talking tougher — on the use of credit checks, more employers are using them, says a just-released survey of trends in background screening.
Of the 783 responses to the survey conducted in March by EmployeeScreenIQ, 21 percent of the respondents reported they credit check all their employees. Last year EmployeeScreenIQ found only 15 percent reported doing that.
Whether they check all or just some employees, more companies are checking. The survey found two-thirds of perform credit checks; that’s up from 61 percent last year.
SHRM got similar numbers when it surveyed members in winter 2009. Forty percent said they credit-checked no one; 13 percent reported credit checking everyone.
It seems surprising that the number of companies performing universal credit checks is going up, even as the debate over whether they should even be allowed is intensifying. keep reading…
Mostly what HR professionals are looking up online is pretty standard information about candidates, like LinkedIn recommendations. Fewer — but still quite a few — are trying to find out more controversial stuff, such as photos or what groups on Facebook a job candidate belongs to.
That’s the upshot of a SHLPreVisor study of more than 460 human resources professionals. The majority (53%) were in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, with 39% in the Americas and 8% in Australasia. Here’s a chart showing what’s being searched: keep reading…
Government background checks of federal contract employees are constitutional, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
“Reasonable investigations of applicants and employees aid the government in ensuring the security of its facilities and in employing a competent, reliable workforce,” said the opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito. That the workers who sued the government on privacy grounds were contractors and not civil servants was a formality and all but irrelevant, Alito wrote.
The case was brought by 28 scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena The sprawling facility is operated by the California Institute of Technology. The plaintiffs are employees of Caltech. keep reading…
In case you were enjoying yourself over the holidays instead of reading my critically-acclaimed (OK, criticized) articles, my objective is to bring best practices to the HR forefront. Experience shows organizations that make informed hiring and promotion decisions (e.g., based on objective job-related tools) tend to have happier employees, are more successful, and reduce their potential for unfair hiring practice challenges.
That said, in case you might have missed Hiring the Kind of Salespeople You Only Dream About, I found John Zappe’s EEOC article a great companion. That is, if your organization routinely uses credit checking when hiring salespeople, you might want to know how the present Washington administration treats employers who don’t do their hiring homework. keep reading…
Just when it appeared the year would end without more consolidation in the talent acquisition arena, two deals managed to get in under the wire.
On the penultimate day of 2010, First Advantage was acquired by a private equity firm that also holds a sizeable chunk of Lawson Software. Symphony Technology Group, based in Palo Alto, California, bought First Advantage for $265 million in cash from owner CoreLogic.
First Advantage is involved in multiple aspects of talent acquisition, including background screening and assessments, applicant tracking technology, onboarding, and candidate sourcing and recruitment marketing. keep reading…
With the U.S. beginning its fourth year of a sour economy that is taking its toll on consumer credit scores, the EEOC signaled this week that it is taking a hard look at employers who use credit checks as a screening tool.
Kaplan Higher Education Corp. was sued Tuesday by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over its use of credit checks. The suit claims Kaplan denied jobs based on credit histories in such a way that it had a disparate impact on blacks.
The EEOC said Kaplan “engaged in a pattern or practice of unlawful discrimination by refusing to hire a class of black job applicants nationwide.”
“This practice has an unlawful discriminatory impact because of race and is neither job-related nor justified by business necessity.” The types of jobs at issue weren’t disclosed.
A company spokeswoman denied the charge, saying background checks are conducted on all potential employees. Credit checks are part of the screening for jobs involving financial matters, including advising students on financial aid. keep reading…
This article addresses five questions raised in response to Part 1 of this series published last week. It addresses the best ways to assess candidate performance pre-hire and when to use references.
Finding accurate real world predictors of future performance is difficult but not impossible. Professional sports teams find that the best predictor of a new hire’s potential performance is their performance on the field in practice and preseason games — i.e., a work sample. Google looks at a multitude of factors that can be combined by an algorithm to successfully predict both future on-the-job performance and retention risk. The U.S. military and numerous firms in industries with extreme operational risk like airlines and chemical production facilities rely on sophisticated simulations to assess how a candidate would react in various situations.
There are literally hundreds of potential tools and approaches that can be used. Unfortunately, the vast majority of research on the subject is questionable at best. keep reading…
Employment reference checking and background screening should win recognition as the weakest of all corporate HR processes. A validity meta-analysis study conducted by Aamodt & Williams in 2005 found that the corrected validity coefficient for reference recommendations and actual job performance was a staggeringly low .29. Despite the facts, 96% of organizations use reference checks as a screening and selection tool, according to a recent survey by SHRM.
Anyone who’s been in the profession for more than a minute or two knows deep down that references suck as indicators. keep reading…
Employee referrals and social media have begun to blend together. Could background checks and social media be next?
A new company called “Social Intelligence” says it’ll “track the worldwide network of social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, individual blogs, and thousands of other sources.”
Social Intelligence will, within 24-48 hours, produce a report on a job candidate using both automation as well as humans, the latter there to make sure there aren’t “false positives.” It says it will weed out “protected class” information it finds, such as race and religion. The company is also offering a version to monitor what existing employees are up to.
As far as the hiring version, a screenshot, which you can click on to enlarge, shows that the employee profile screens for such things as: ”Gangs,” “Drugs/drug lingo,” “demonstrating potentially violent behavior,” and “poor judgment” — something we could all agree can be found in ample supply on social media.
I asked the company’s CEO, Max Drucker, whether this judgment thing is kind of subjective. “We err on the side of not flagging something,” he says, adding that “serious red-flag issues” are what they’re really looking for. He also notes that the firm has three people review information before the profile’s done. So, “Todd beat Sean in the 600-meter dash” shouldn’t show up as a Todd-beats-people flag. I hope. keep reading…
In the next Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, I take a four-part look at credit checks in the employment process. I outline the current federal limitations on an employers’ ability to obtain and use information regarding an applicant’s or employee’s credit history. I delineate the current proposed amendments to federal statutes. I look at recently enacted state legislation bearing on an employer’s use of credit reports. Finally, I suggest possible options for employers in dealing with this fast-changing legal landscape.
For these purposes online, I’m just going to tackle the fourth part — your options for handling federal and state legislation in flux. keep reading…
You have a great candidate who seems ideal for the job you’re looking to fill and you start researching her online. You land on her Facebook page where you see a picture of her and your spouse or partner, which suggests that they’re more than friends. What do you do?
If you picked #4, you’d be in the minority. keep reading…
Some recruiting directors don’t like it when I criticize them for not operating their recruiting function in a more businesslike manner. They fail to realize that the recruiting process directly impacts business revenues and it is at least as important as supply chain, lean production, and CRM. Many who are responsible for the overall recruiting process rely on their gut to determine whether the overall process is running smoothly.
In direct contrast, other major business process owners use a “data or evidence-driven” approach to determine not just whether a process is producing the desirable results but also to determine precisely at what step are the failures occurring. If you’re ready to shift to a more businesslike and data-driven approach that can help you pinpoint the “failure points” in your recruiting process, this article will outline what you need to do. keep reading…
We have some great hits from the community so let’s get started!
Here’s what’s going on in the ERE community this week:
Simon Meth writes: “Popular opinion is that employee referrals are the #1 source of hire in a corporate environment. I believe that to be true. But are employee referrals the #1 source of quality hires? I doubt it! Following are some thoughts from my own experience. Your mileage may vary.
Can employee referrals backfire? Are they the number one source of quality hires?
keep reading…
Did you know that ERE has a group on LinkedIn? Check it out!
Here’s what’s going on in the ERE community this week:
Kristine Rhodes writes “Recently, I asked my client partners why they declined using mobile marketing as part of their recruiting strategy in 2009. I heard everything from “It’s just hype,” to “It’s intrusive,” to my personal favorite “It’s dangerous.” So I thought I’d share some quick facts to dispel the myths, and provide a few ways to ease into a mobile strategy.
Are you trying to get mobile recruiting initiatives completed this year? Take a look at Kristine’s post and add your own comments.
How many applicants fake test results and assessments?
Does cheating work? Is it worthwhile?
What can you, the employer, do about it? keep reading…
Nine years after the U.S. Congress endorsed the use of electronic signatures for commerce, research shows the majority of employers and academic institutions are refusing to accept them for verification purposes.
employeescreenIQ says it found “an alarming 57 percent of requests for employment and education verifications were rejected when an electronically signed consent form was used.” The company, one of the largest global screening firms, conducts hundreds of thousands of these verifications for companies of all sizes, including several on the Fortune 500 list. In the majority of screens, the former employer or academic institution insists on first getting a copy of the subject’s signature.
Schools rejected electronic signatures 59 percent of the time, while employers were only slightly better, rejecting them 55 percent of the time.
“We find that most employers and academic institutions still want to see an actual signature before releasing information,” employeescreenIQ’s Vice President of Quality Service, Kevin Bachman, says in the announcement the company issued today. “If an HR manager can’t get the information they need to make a hiring decision, there’s the likelihood they could simply move onto another candidate.”
An interview with Rich Kenny of Northwest, who talks about the company’s combo with Delta; reducing time-to-hire; background checks; on-the-spot hires; recruitment advertising; and improving the candidate experience.
The hiring practices of one of the most famous entertainment venues in the world have been called discriminatory as the result of a background criminal check that turned up a job candidate’s assault conviction.
A New York City law firm filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claiming Madison Square Garden discriminates against African-American job applicants by illegally using criminal history reports in making hiring decisions.
The EEOC complaint alleges that Carlene Clarke, 27, received an employment offer letter from New York’s Madison Square Garden in September 2007 which was rescinded a month later after a background check discovered she had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault more than five years earlier.
According to the press release issued by Outten & Golden LLP, which represents Clarke, the rationale for the complaint is that “use of criminal histories in making hiring and other employment decisions has a disparate impact on African-Americans.”
Tech workers get an average of 23 recruiter inquiries a week -- yes, a week, says a survey from TEKsystems, a global IT staff... more »